The Man in the Shed Read Online Free PDF

are the only things that move.
    In March the sea is two degrees warmer than at any other time of the year. By then the weather has settled into a predictable range. People are able to make plans. Mum went to the beach every day to pursue her ocean swimming. She’d found a place to put my sister’s pregnancy, and possibly Dad and myself. She wasn’t as overwhelmed as she had been just a few weeks earlier because she’d found she could just swim away from all of that. The man from the shed always went with her. They are always back by the time Dad gets home. On the clothes line, I’ve noticed, only Mum’s togs are ever pegged up.
    This particular afternoon is one out of the box. Blue skies with a late incandescent blaze that has everyone driving to the beach. When I get home Mum’s togs aren’t on the line and neither is she in the house. I have an idea she is in the shed. For ten minutes I stare out the window until the dog comes out of her kennel, walks in a small tired circle then returns to the dark of the kennel.
    A few minutes later Dad shows up at the side of the house. I see him looking at the clothes line. Next thing he is inside the house shouting for me to pack the fishing gear.
    By the time we get there the car park is full and we have to park back along the sea wall. At the edge of the tide a crowd of swimmers stand like sun-dazed cattle. Near the sand spit seagulls wheel and dive at the sea. Dad is busy getting the fishing gear out of the boot, so he doesn’t see Mum sink into the tide like someone crouching behind the bushes. She pushes off, head down, her quiet feet behind her. I wonder then if she’s seen us. And, if she has, this new feeling I have is an unpleasant one. Stroking into her wake is the man from the shed. Those are his long legs and black togs. I have an idea they’ve spent the whole day down here. Dad locks the car. His blue work shirt, I notice, is patched with sweat. We climb the wall and drop down onto the sand and hotfoot it to the water’s edge. Towards the point the fishermen are lined up on the sea side of the estuary. Some are familiar faces; some of them are known to Dad. I wonder if they know his story, his quiet anguish. I wonder because whenever we come near their eyes head out to sea.
    I drop behind a step in order to sneak another look back at the swimmers. They have just left the first raft. I know Mum by her slow and methodical style. The sea parts and continues to part. Into this smooth water swims the man from the shed. Nothing about their swimming suggests gambolling joy. It is steadfast and mindful of form—to my mind a lower register of contentment. You could get the same from painting a fence.
    An old Chinese guy with a steel rod calmly reels in two fish at a time. There must be a dozen fish squirming and bending around his feet. He hasn’t taken the time to stick and bleed them. There are still more to be caught.
    Every third stroke Mum lays her head on one side to breathe. On the beach side she might have seen the fishermen wading out to the fish, and, beyond them, the sunlit windscreens. What she can’t see is the direction taken by the spooked fish. Already the water is cutting up near her and the man from the shed. The faces of the fishermen, including Dad’s, are tight with fear of the fish moving beyond the reach of their casts. I stand by Dad trying not to look at the purpling colour of his face or take personally his frosted eyes. So, he’s seen her—that much is clear. In fact he looks to be on the brink of reaching down to pick up a rock to throw at her. He could always say he threw it to warn her of the kingies heading in her direction. The kingies are the fish causing the panic.
    A whole line of us follows the disturbed water towards the rafts. Men with surfcasters, some of them twelve feet long,some with lures beaten out of dessert and soup spoons to look like the flashing scales of a fish. We advance into the tide, a line of us, up to where it